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Show Computer care can halt repair bills jyIlusiiiess Computer ir,'rjr David Lyle is the kind of computer technician every city ought to have. When he's not ripping apart computers for us so that we can tell you about their electronic merits, he heads up Credence Computer Services, a computer maintenance and repair company. After a decade of fixing minis and personal computers, Lyle's like a doctor to his customers. He takes the time to tell them how to avoid repair bills. At our urging, he's.passing on these Ten Comandments for Computer Com-puter Maintenance. Lyle's shalt's and shalt not's cover just the parts of computer com-puter systems that a novice can easily find and work on. None of them can harm your computer even if you're and out-and-out klutz. And Lyle promises these solid financial incentives for following his advice: (1) 25 percent lower repair and maintenance bills, (2) 25 percent longer computer life, and (3) 10 percent fewer headaches caused by printer snafus and disk errors. 1. THOU SHALT gently vacuum-clean vacuum-clean keyboards, printers, and disk drives weekly. Dust slows them down and fouls electrical contacts. If you have a hard (Winchester) disk drive, be sure to vacuum the unit's outside slot through which air circulates. Lyle says, "The cleaner your computer equipment looks, the longer it will last." .2. THOU SHALT NOT oil disk drives or keyboards. Oil will only make them sticky and then they'll perform even worse. 3. THOU SHALT clean and oil metal tracks in printers on which the print heads slide back and forth. First try using a paper towel to wipe the tracks spotlessly clean. If that doesn't work, spray contact cleaner onto a paper towel and clean the tracks with that. Next apply a thin coating of a light lubricant such as sewing machine or jeweler's oil. 4. THOU SHALT NOT pull on computer wires. Always grab hold of the plastic or metal connectors on their ends. Don't wiggle the connectors. Pull them straight out or push them straight in. If the metal contacts are not clean and shiny, wipe them gently with a ' ' TexW ipe" or spray them with contact cleaner. Both products are available from TV and computer supply stores.' Do not use any other kind of . cleaning product on computer -contacts. j- 5. THOU SHALT invest in computer switching equipment if you're now plugging and unplugging printers, ' modems, or other accessories acces-sories more than once or twice a week. At many computer retailers and mail order supplies, you can buy switches that permit two or more users to share one printer or other gadget with a quick flip of the switch. Since a new cord can cost $50 to $150 or more plus a $50 repair call to locate the defective wire a $125 switch is a wise investment. 6. THOU SHALT regularly use a disk drive cleaning kit. Made by 3M, Dysan, Verbatim, and others, they clean the read write heads inside your floppy disk drives. Cleanliness nrotects vour valuable data, avoids repair calls, and adds up to five years to the life of a disk drive. 7. THOU SHALT inspect each floppy disk monthly. Examine it be peeking through the half-inch wide slot in its protective enclosure. If you find streaks, that may be dirt; copy the disk's data onto a new disk and discard the old one. Tiny traces of dirt can damage the disk or your disk drive readwrite heads. Both kinds of damage may destroy vital data. 8. THOU SHALT NOT twist floppy disks by hand inside their protective enclosures. If you twist in the wrong direction, you can scratch the .surfaccJScratches can damage disk drive readwrite heads and destroy data. 9. THOU SHALT invest in a diagnostic disk for your floppy disk drive. Locate it in a retail store, mail order catalog, or at users' club meetings and on their bulletin boards. By making a monthly do-it-yourself diagnosis, you can catch problems with disk read write head alignment and motor speed before they become major repair bills. You'll spend $45 to $90 more to fix a badly out-of-adjustment disk drive than on one that just needs a little adjustment. Lyle recommends making your own set of diagnostic disks to use in addition to the store-bought disk. Make it when your computer is brand new, by totally filling one brand-new floppy disk with data and leaving another one totally empty. Once a month, tell your computer to copy all the data from the full disk to the empty disk. If you get "Readwrite error" messages, there's trouble to be fixed. If not, erase the second disk and store the set safely away until next month. 10. THOU SHALT NOT touch your backup floppy disks if your diagnostic diagnos-tic tests show that there may be trouble with a disk drive. You could damage or destroy these valuable backup copies. Instead, if there are . new files to be backed up, do it on a new floppy disk;.1 Ift that.'disknfails, -you'll still have your old backups intact. The authors answer questions and will send you a checklist of available back issues. Send a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Comparative Compara-tive details on computer price and performance are found in a- new 4,000-word special report, "Your Personal Computer Buying Guide." For your copy, send $3 for Report FP02, in care of the Park Record, P.O. Box 3688, Park City, Utah 84060. Make checks payable to Newspaperbooks. You can read back issues of these columns on News-Net's News-Net's on-line data base. For details call 1-800-345-1301. (c) 1985 PK Associates, Inc. |